NSCAD students slam plan for tuition hike

NSCAD University’s student union says the latest sustainability plan for the Halifax school is a “road map to disaster” that calls for a six per cent jump in tuition fees in 2015-16.

“Basically, the administration is asking for a reset in tuition fees,” said Caleb Hung, president of the Student Union of NSCAD University.

“Every year, you are only allowed to add tuition fee (increases) of three per cent per year … They are trying to change that,” he said Friday.

NSCAD gave its sustainability plan to government Thursday.

However, the university has not yet made the report public and doesn’t expect to until at least sometime next week.

The university “got its knuckles rapped” for posting its recent affiliation study on its website before government officials had adequate time to respond to it, NSCAD president Daniel O’Brien said.

The plan “is done and government indeed has a copy now but as I said, we don’t want to make the same error twice,” O’Brien said Friday.

“We have to maintain good relations with our government partners.”

Hung, a university board representative, said he has seen the sustainability report and doesn’t like what it contains.

The student union issued a news release Friday criticizing the sustainability report, which it says also calls for a 20 per cent increase in tuition fees for graduate students and a 10 per cent increase in university enrolment in the next four years.

“The idea that NSCAD can simultaneously increase tuition fees at double the rate of the rest of the province, while exponentially boosting enrolment, is entirely unrealistic,” Hung said in the release.

“Expecting existing and incoming students to cover the cost of NSCAD’s debt effectively places the blame for mistakes made by past administrations on the backs of students.”

In an interview, Hung said the student union put out the release believing the university had already released the report.

He declined to share a copy of it Friday.

O’Brien admitted the sustainability plan calls for an increase in tuition but was unable to specify the amount.

“We looked at the tuition fees across all the universities in the province and we averaged them and we are slightly lower than that. What we are looking for is an adjustment to bring us to that level.”

Under existing funding agreements between the province and universities, universities cannot raise tuition by more than three per cent annually in most programs.

“We are assuming the government will permit an additional flat increase that all universities transfer to their tuition fees each year, and what we are looking for is a reset — they refer to it as a reset — that would be in addition to the flat rate increase. It would be more than three per cent but I don’t know if it adds up to six per cent,” O’Brien said.

“We are not the only university looking for resets, either, so stay tuned.”

The sustainability report also recommends reducing labour costs through early retirement of faculty, the union’s news release said.

A spokeswoman for the Advanced Education Department said the sustainability report is now with staff for review.

“Once the minister (Kelly Regan) has seen and reviewed the report, she will provide comment,” Chrissy Matheson said in an email Friday.